A Home For Broken Things

I was born with a broken heart.

All my life I’ve been wrought with feelings bigger than my frame could contain.

“Too sensitive, too dramatic, too empathetic”.

I have been called every term that indicates I am too much emotion and not enough logic. Too much heart -- as if there could ever be such a thing. I internalized those definitions, using them to define myself according to the world’s perception.

This became my reality for so long I forgot how to listen to the knowing inside of me that was left not only unfamiliar, but abandoned. There were days I could not distinguish the difference between society’s voice and my own. I would find myself stifling the fire within me for fear of setting the world ablaze. Somewhere along the way, I sacrificed myself.

Unrecognizable and reduced to ashes.

Combusting from the inside, everything around me became a casualty of my inner battles. All my life I've felt my soft heart had no place in this callous world. I had allowed it to harden me until my own body felt foreign. My entire existence has been composed of me minimizing myself and my wild heart to fit into a world not meant for untamed things

Who am I? Why am I forced to live in this foreign land? Why am I left to translate the language of my heart to a people who were never meant to comprehend my dialect?

Searching everywhere, I found there were no answers outside of me. The answers had to be within.

How could I engage myself in that conversation? How could I speak without being accused of my feelings clouding the facts? How could I express the reality of my perception without it being minimized to nothingness or more than the world needed? How do I unlock this cage I’ve been confined to? How do I unlearn the lies the world told me to keep me quiet?

I found pens only speak your truth, and paper doesn’t judge. So I write. I write to become familiar with the way my intuition sounds. I write to filter out the repetitive voices that are not my own. I write to connect to my purpose. I write to share that purpose with the world.

I found peace in the release. Each word making space for the garden of life that existed in what had been forced underground for so long. Each line a grounded root. Each finished piece a blooming.

The writing teaches me about myself. It teaches me that no one is too much of anything. I have learned that those who possess overflow are not meant to be ridiculed for their lack of normalcy -- whatever that is. Those who own overflow are meant to pour their abundance into a starving world.

I am not too empathetic, the world lacks empathy. I am not to play tough to conceal my softness. It is my duty to pour my abundant understanding into society’s rigid frame.

I know what it is like to feel overlooked, misunderstood and out of place. I understand I am not alone. I write to make those who suffer feel seen, acknowledged and appreciated for simply existing as they are. It takes all kinds to make up this world, it is best to be who you are, unapologetically, so that your people, those who speak the language of your heart, know where to find you.

I write because I now know that regardless of what you are told by the world, aside from what you are taught or forced to believe -- you are enough. You are not “too much”, you are surely not too little, you are just enough. I write because I believe we are all born broken hearted or find ourselves broken somewhere along our road.

I share with the hope that I possess a piece someone needs to become whole again. I write to make space for those who do not fit anywhere else.

I write to heal all lonely, broken hearts.

I started with my own.

I found my place in the world by creating the space I deserved.